


Your Baby Boy and Your Perfect Man

by mustachio



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Do not read if you haven't listened to episode 43, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1321105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustachio/pseuds/mustachio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When one of Cecil's boys is brought down, the other steps up.</p><p> </p><p>*** Spoilers for episode 43! ***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Baby Boy and Your Perfect Man

**Author's Note:**

> And here is your last warning: this whole fic is one big spoiler for episode 43. You should not read this if you haven't listened to that.

Khoshekh continues breathing throughout the night.

He continues breathing, but he does not open his eyes. Part of that, Cecil knows, is only because of the sedatives. The sedatives will fade and wear off and Khoshekh will wake up. That is not comforting. That is not comforting at all.

Khoshekh lies still except for the slight rise and fall of his stomach as he breathes. The room is completely silent save the barely restrained sobs Cecil can no longer hold back. Cecil reaches a hand out to tangle in Khoshekh’s fur where he isn’t too badly injured. The fur is bloody and matted and feels awful. Cecil would retract his hand if he didn’t feel like he needed the reassurance that Khoshekh isn’t going to just disappear on him the moment he lets go.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Cecil squeezes his eyes shut, grip tightening in Khoshekh’s fur. The cat doesn’t move to signal any sort of discomfort or pain. Two steady streams of tears make their way down Cecil’s cheeks and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away. Why should he? They aren’t going to stop anytime soon. His hand is shaking now, body rocking back and forth. It suddenly feels very cold in the room and he wraps his free hand around his body in a pathetic attempt to keep himself warm. Or maybe it’s an attempt at holding himself together. It’s kind of hard to tell. “I’m sorry, Khoshekh. If it weren’t for me this never would have happened. If I’d only been able to handle that _thing_ myself you would be safe and happy in your usual hover spot. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be lying here unconscious and in pain. Bruised and bloody.”

Cecil chokes on air and the sobs come out harder now, the tears flowing even more freely. Vaguely, over the sound of his own crying, Cecil can hear the sound of a door opening. He doesn’t turn to acknowledge the room’s new occupant.

“I lead it to you. I lead that loathsome, awful mechanical creature straight to you. I lead it straight to you and put you in harm’s way when it should have been me all—all along.”

Arms wrap around Cecil, strong and steady and stifling. Cecil doesn’t want to be held. He wants to be alone. He leans forward a bit more in an attempt to get away from those arms, but the arms just tighten around him and force him to sit a little straighter in his chair.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“ _Leave me alone._ ”

“You did all you could.”

Cecil jerks forward, standing quickly, and turning on the other man with a fierce glare. He moves so quickly he nearly knocks into Khoshekh’s bed.

“Carlos, _stop_! You weren’t there! You don’t know any of that!” Carlos tries to reach out for Cecil again, but Cecil slaps his hand away with such force that even his hand stings for a moment afterwards. He’ll think to feel guilty about that later. Right now he’s in no state of mind to feel guilty about hurting Carlos’s feelings when Khoshekh is lying on the bed fighting for his life. “I could have prevented this! I should have known that thing was up to no good! I should have known that thing was from StrexCorp, but I didn’t! I was so _stupid_! Stupid, _stupid_ Cecil!”

He falls to the floor and Carlos makes a move to catch him, but he’s too slow, and maybe that’s for the best. Cecil just slapped his hand away not even a minute ago. Would trying to hold him again now be a good idea? Probably not. Still, Carlos can’t just let Cecil sit there alone like that. He’s the spitting image of grief down there – hands gripping tight at his hair, knees pulled up to his chest, face buried in his knees, and shoulders shaking with unrestrained sobs. The sound of Cecil crying is the worst thing Carlos thinks he’s ever heard.

It’s honestly a little strange to see Cecil get like this. It’s been almost a year since they began dating, but Carlos has never seen Cecil get like this. He knew it could happen, of course. How could he not? It had been the sound of Cecil losing his cool on air that woke up him when he was as good as dead the night he stupidly jumped into the tiny city below lane five. But he hadn’t seen that. Cecil had regained his cool by the time they met in the Arby’s parking lot and since then even the events of the auction hadn’t shaken him enough to get Cecil like this.

But then, Cecil has a higher tolerance for what people can do to him than he has for what people can do to those he cares about, animals included.

Carlos takes a seat next to Cecil on the hard linoleum floor, waits a moment before speaking up.

“I know nothing I say is going to make you feel better,” Carlos begins. “But I hope you don’t mind if I keep trying. I love you, Cecil, and I know you. I know you know this isn’t your fault. I wish you wouldn’t say it is. It was them. It was StrexCorp. Everything bad that’s happened lately, it’s all been them.”

He pauses to leave room for Cecil to say anything if he wants. The only sounds Cecil makes are the sounds of his continued crying. Those sounds make Carlos’s heart twist and turn in the worst way.

“Did I ever tell you about the first dog I ever had, Cecil?” Carlos plays with the laces on his shoes, staring up at the ceiling as he tries to recall the details of what he wants to say. “Well, when I was… five I think it was. Yeah, five. When I was five my parents got me this dog. It was the best present I’d ever gotten at that point in my life. All I’d ever wanted was a dog, you know? You know how much I like dogs. Anyway, my parents finally got me a dog and this one day I was playing with it. We were out in the front yard playing fetch and we shouldn’t have been. We lived on kind of a dangerous street so my parents didn’t like us going out front, we were always supposed to be in back.”

He pauses for a moment, glancing over at Cecil. Cecil still isn’t looking at him, but he’s stopped shaking quite so violently so Carlos looks at his shoes and continues with his story again.

“Anyway, we were out front and I should have known not to do that. My parents warned me and my brother not to go out there all the time – they hadn’t adopted my sister yet – but they weren’t home, and my brother fell asleep while he was supposed to be watching me so I thought, ‘why not?’ I guess I didn’t think things through much when I was a kid—“

“You don’t think things through now.” Cecil’s voice is muffled, face still pressed into his knees, but Carlos takes this as progress, anyway.

“I guess that’s true, too.” Carlos laughs softly. It’s not very funny, but he laughs anyway because it feels like the right thing to do. “So we were out front playing and everything was fine, but then my neighbor was coming home. I’m not sure where was coming from. I think there was a football game on that night so he might’ve gone somewhere to watch it. Anyway, he was coming home and he was drunk because that’s just how those things go.”

From his periphery Carlos can see Cecil raise his head quickly. Carlos doesn’t look directly at him, but he’s pretty sure if he did, he’d see Cecil giving him that awful worried look he always gives when he thinks Carlos is in danger.

“So he was driving home drunk and somehow when he went to turn into his driveway he just completely missed by, like, ten feet. He ended up driving right into our front lawn and hit my dog.” It’s a little surprising how clearly he remembers that night. Cecil sucks in a breath, but Carlos still doesn’t look at him. “I was fine. Physically, anyway. I was pretty shaken up and I cried for a week, but he didn’t come anywhere near hitting me. It was awful. My parents didn’t even blame me for going out in the front yard when I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I always felt it was kind of my fault. I should have known.”

Now Carlos looks at Cecil. Whatever worry was probably on his face before is gone now, in its place a blank stare. Cecil’s cheeks are tearstained, but the tears themselves seem to have stopped for now. That’s good.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Cecil’s voice teeters on the edge of flat and unimpressed and horribly, awfully depressed. It’s a tone that makes Carlos’s insides twist and coil and threaten to jump out of his body to wrap around Cecil in their own morbidly disgusting version of a comforting hug. They don’t, thankfully. Carlos shrugs.

“No. I don’t think so. This just kind of reminded me of that in a way and it was all I could think of. You stopped crying, at least.” Carlos gives Cecil a small smile that goes unreturned. He tries not to be hurt by that. “Can I hold your hand?”

Cecil looks away from him again to glare at the floor. Carlos wonders if he only managed to make Cecil feel worse or if the glare is for some other reason. He gets his answer when Cecil uncurls himself from the ball he’d been sitting in to not only let Carlos hold his hand, but to crawl into Carlos’s lap completely. One of Carlos’s hands tangles itself with the fingers on one of Cecil’s hands, the other hand wraps around Cecil’s whole body tightly. Cecil presses his face into Carlos’s shoulder.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Cecil.”

“You never said what happened to your dog after he got hit. Was he okay?”

Carlos doesn’t answer right away and he can feel Cecil’s heart speed up. He rests his hands on Cecil’s shoulders, pushing slightly so that there’s enough space between them that Cecil can see Carlos grinning with that smile that made him fall in love in the first place.

“He ended up losing a leg, but I think he was okay. He managed to live another fourteen years after that and always seemed happy. I don’t know how he did it. He was this huge husky by the end of his life and I’m pretty sure he was already four years old when we got him, but he was definitely okay after that. My dad, you know he’s an engineer; well, he managed to make a prosthetic leg for the dog. It was always kind of amazing to watch him go through life after that.”

Cecil looks at him with wide eyes, a glimmer of hope shining through the grief that had been completely clouding them over before. It’s a little ridiculous that his story is what’s giving Cecil hope. The two situations are actually completely different and the doctors already said that Khoshekh is going to be fine, but he doesn’t say that. Why would he? If his story did manage to make Cecil feel better then, honestly, who is Carlos to say it’s ridiculous? To question it? Carlos rubs comforting circles against Cecil’s back, presses a kiss to his forehead.

“So Khoshekh is going to be okay, right?”

There might be a glimmer of hope in Cecil’s eyes, but his voice still sounds so sad and hopeless that Carlos can’t be absolutely sure that his heart didn’t literally break at the question.

“Yeah, yeah of course he is. The doctors said so, right?” Carlos wishes he could give Cecil more than that, but he has no medical experience. He’s had to learn a few key things since coming to Night Vale, but he’s never had to deal with anything like this.

“I know what they said. I want to know what you think. You’re a scientist.”

There’s a bit of an edge to Cecil’s voice that Carlos can’t quite place. He wants to tell Cecil that being a scientist doesn’t mean he has any substantial medical knowledge, but doing that seems like a bad idea. Cecil isn’t in a good place right now. The last thing Carlos wants to do is set him off again.

Cecil stands, holding out his hand for Carlos to help him up, too. Carlos looks at Khoshekh for a moment. He definitely doesn’t look good. A good chunk of his side was torn out and one of his legs seems to have taken some pretty bad damage, too. It probably won’t have to be amputated, at least, but it’ll be hard for Khoshekh to use it. Maybe he can make something to help with that if the doctors don’t do it themselves.

He can feel Cecil staring at him expectantly, but it takes a full minute before Carlos can figure out what he wants to say and even then he isn’t sure if what he’s come up with is any good.

“He’s pretty banged up.” That’s a lame way to start and Cecil makes a noise in the back of his throat like he about to cry again so Carlos is quick to amend. “But I think he’ll make it out. It’s going to be difficult. He may not be able to go back to his usual hover spot now that he’s been ripped out of it. He’ll have to readjust to life on land if that is the case. But that’s okay, right? You’ll help him. _We’ll_ help him.”

Cecil nods, swallowing thickly.

“Are you sure?” Cecil’s voice wavers ever so slightly. It’s hard to see Cecil like this.

“Of course I’m sure. He’s your baby boy.” Carlos smiles, bright and sure. “Your boys don’t go down that easily.”

For the first time that Carlos has seen tonight, Cecil smiles. It’s small, but it’s there, and Carlos is glad for it. 

“Thank you, Carlos.”

“You’re welcome, Ceec. ”

With a hand on Cecil’s shoulder, Carlos pushes him down onto the chair Cecil had been sitting in before Carlos came into the room. Cecil looks up at him with some amount of curiosity, but doesn’t try to get up or ask what Carlos is doing. Carlos explains anyway.

“Now that I’ve looked at Khoshekh, I want to look at you. Which leg?”

Carlos gets down on one knee and if Cecil didn’t know any better, he’d think Carlos was about to propose. That’s definitely not what’s happening, though. Cecil has seen Carlos’s poorly hidden proposal plan drafts. None of them take place in the hospital next to a badly injured Khoshekh, half of them take place in the Arby’s parking lot, the rest in various places all around Night Vale. Cecil once spent an entire day coming up with day dreams about each one of them and Carlos never found out. Really, it’s amazing what that man can miss sometimes.

“This one.”

Cecil slides his injured leg out so that Carlos can examine it. The bite is surprisingly shallow. It stopped bleeding about ten minutes before Carlos got here and has barely stung since. The bite was probably meant as a warning – meant to cause just enough damage to hurt, not enough to cause any lasting damage. The cold air that hits his leg when Carlos removes his shoe and sock and rolls up his pants is a stark contrast to the warmth of Carlos’s hands and it sends a shiver up Cecil’s spine.

The way Carlos is looking at him sends a shock of warmth throughout his entire body. Carlos is looking at him like he’s an experiment – like something interesting and amazing and like Cecil is something he could spend his entire life studying and never get bored. Maybe anyone else would find it weird to be looked at like a science experiment, but Carlos is a scientist. Science is the most important thing in Carlos’s life and to be looked at like he’s included in that, well, Cecil couldn’t ask for anything more. Carlos runs a finger over the bite marks that are already scabbing over.

“I will always be amazed at how quickly you heal.”

After pressing a quick kiss to the wound, Carlos fixes the leg of Cecil’s pants and replaces his sock and shoe. He stands, and Cecil pulls him in so that Carlos is sitting in his lap this time. Carlos snuggles into him and Cecil has never felt more loved.

“You’re planning on staying here overnight, right?” Carlos asks into Cecil’s shoulder. “We should see about getting an extra cot in here so that it’s a little more comfortable.”

“We?”  
“Well, yeah. I’m not just going to leave you to deal with this alone.” Carlos lifts his head from Cecil’s shoulder, giving Cecil such an incredulous look that Cecil blushes and can’t seem to meet Carlos’s gaze.

Cecil shrugs and pulls Carlos’s head down onto his shoulder again.

“You don’t have to stay, Carlos. You should go home. You have work in the morning.”

“No, no way. Leaving isn’t an option if you’re staying here. Like I said, I’m not leaving you to deal with this on your own.” Carlos shakes his head like the idea of leaving is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Maybe it is. Cecil would be okay with it if it were the most ridiculous thing Carlos has ever heard. He prefers the idea of Carlos staying. “I want to be here as soon as you need me, Ceec.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”


End file.
